


Off the Rails (Taking an Uber, Instead)

by Prinzenhasserin



Category: Les Misérables (Dallas 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Costumes, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover with Brick Canon, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Paris (Texas)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-25 05:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12523716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/pseuds/Prinzenhasserin
Summary: Javert and Valjean’s adventures while Uber-riding. Or: A derailment, Texan style. Or: When Javert accompanies Valjean to Marius’s grandparents, they did not know yet that the evening would continue with a costume party.





	Off the Rails (Taking an Uber, Instead)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).



> Dear Esteliel! I saw your prompts and was immediately inspired to write a crack!LARP fic. This is not quite that, but I hope you enjoy <3 Instead, it's my take on focusing on the weirdest prompts and desperately trying to make them canon-compliant. /o\
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, who was such a tremendous help and whom I probably annoyed without equal. This would have been half as long and twice as complicated without you, and I very much appreciate all that you did.
> 
> My apologies to all the non-weird Texans, of whom there are many, I assume, who all do not appear in this story.  
> Also, all my apologies to all Uber drivers who don’t abandon their customers on the curb, those also don't appear in this story.

Valjean generally hated being recognized for giving charity, but nevertheless he carried a chequebook with him for the many occasions where he stumbled upon a poor sap who needed the money more than he did himself. He had not thought he would need it when he set off for the barricades, yet habit made him pocket the thing anyway.

The night had been derailed entirely. Initially, he had only wanted to check on Cosette’s boy. Instead, he had stumbled into the middle of a riot that had left most of its participants dead, and now Marius might well be dead, too, and the booklet was pressing into his side, decidedly useless. In fact, now probably an indication that he had meant to bribe himself out of a conviction.

He thought unkind thoughts of Javert—Detective Javert, Prison Warden Javert—who had appeared out of thin air just to call him by his old convict number, just like a ghost of crimes past. Valjean had touched him, gently, for his compassion in letting Marius and him go, the entire awful day still in his bones, halfway wondering how Javert could have changed locations and clothes so fast. He didn’t notice the flinch at first, too distracted by the leather gloves. 

It was a relief for him to stop running — but somehow it wasn’t a relief for Javert, who seemed to be struggling with something himself. And Valjean couldn’t let that happen if it was within his power to provide help. He dealt with touch-starved people a lot — the homeless, the poor, people who often think themselves undeserving of touch. It was a bad sign to see Javert flinching so obviously. There was something not-right about him. 

So what he had done, instead of booking it out of there like a hound out of hell? He’d asked Javert to accompany him to the boy’s home. "I could use an upstanding member of the police," he’d said, and Javert had flinched again.

"Certainly you could do a much better job convincing people without me by your side," the detective had replied, wavering.

It was a marginally better imitation of Javert’s usual inflections, but his voice was still unusually shaky. So when the Uber Valjean had called down stopped, he neatly manoeuvred both Javert and the boy into the car with him.

"I‘m going to deliver their grandson to their doorstep, bleeding like a pig," he told Javert. "Having an honest-to-god member of the police with me can only help my case."

The Uber driver — who thankfully hadn’t said anything about the smell of the sewer, or the muck still hanging about, even though Valjean had tried to clean them both of the most revolting bits, or the blood, but had warily watched them in his rear mirror — focused on the street.

As usual, Javert wasted none of his time acknowledging the driver. "And then what," he asked in his inimitable confrontational manner. "Blackmail, I assume?" 

Valjean shot him a dark look. Javert actually looked like he regretted the remark, which was very unusual. The longer they were sitting in the car, the more Javert seemed to be—off. He was shaking, but Valjean could see no wounds.

He was no help in offloading Marius at the Gillenormands. After Valjean had reassured the harried woman (not Mrs Gillenormand,) who appeared to take the boy of their hands, convinced her they hadn’t been beating the boy up, and turned around to the street again, Javert said, "A rich boy."

Valjean shrugged.

"What’s he gain from being a revolutionary?" Javert said.It was the most genuinely confused question Valjean had ever hear him ask. He seemed to be on a precipice, almost on the verge of tipping over into something Valjean wasn’t sure he wanted to see. "—Beside being a lawbreaking hoodlum."

And then he had to ruin the moment, and seem entirely himself again.

"One does not have to be poor to find the world unjust." And the world truly was unjust, Valjean thought, staring at the inspector’s larger, leather-clad hands. He could have spent the evening sitting in comfort next to his fireplace, listening to Cosette read, but here he was, in the rain, drenched in mud, contemplating his longtime jailer‘s hands.

"What does he know of justice!" Javert said, a sneer in his face.

"Being poor does help," Valjean muttered.

"That’s not justice," Javert said, but instead of disagreeing Valjean said nothing.

Meanwhile,their Uber had vacated the premises entirely. Morosely, Valjean looked out to the street. "I hadn’t even tipped yet," he said.

"You can tip from the app," Javert said, and looked up into the dark sky. He was dressed to ward off rain, the water dripping down his black leather coat in rivulets.

"Then the company gets a share, though," Valjean replied, and eyed the sidewalk. Without thinking about it further, he took Javert’s arm and started walking.

Javert followed after him without hesitation, as if he had only been waiting for Valjean to start walking.It reminded him of the time they spent in Montreuil, also walking alongside each other. It must have reminded Javert of the same, because for once he refrained from calling him by his accursed number when Valjean asked if he could see his daughter one more time, just to say goodbye.

"What else, now?" Javert said, his tone more exasperated than Valjean had ever heard him. "First, you need to get the boy to his grandparents. Understandable, since he was bleeding out right in front of our eyes, though I do think bringing him to a coroner would have served him better. Now you want to reassure your daughter. What next, shall we go to Sunday mass to absolve us of our sins?" Angrily, he brushed his hair back — but he had to have touched something with his gloves, because now a stripe of dirt was running across his face.

Valjean was quiet. He didn’t point out that it would perhaps serve them well. Instead, he said, "You could allow me to say goodbye. One act of mercy."

They walked another block towards the city center, before Javert finally answered, "I’ll allow it."

"Thank you."

On the left side, they passed another driveway, this one decorated with bright lights and banners, loud conversation. A dagger pointed from the postbox to the house. The woman standing next to the doorway smoking a cigarette under the shelter of the front porch was vaguely familiar. Valjean needed a second look to be certain: he recognized her.

It was pure happenstance, of course. Javert would accuse him of misleading them, but how could he have known that the congregation of the Church of St. Jaques de Haut Pas was holding their biyearly fundraiser near Congressman Pontmercy’s residence? Valjean knew his fellow churchgoers, and nothing suggested they were in the same stratosphere as the pompous Congressman Pontmercy— in any case, Mrs Levesque saw him, and went straight for him.

She was dressed in multiple petticoats, her hair pinned up under a bonnet. Though Mrs Levesque was old fashioned, this was a step too far from the usual even for her. This must be the costumed crime dinner, then.

"Mister Fauchelevent!" she called out. Javert looked at him sideways, but Valjean couldn’t focus on him. "You came!"

Valjean could not remember promising to go anywhere with her; in fact, he always strenuously avoided going to anything that had even the slightest possibility of attendance by Mrs. Levesque—she was very free with her admiration of his person, and it made him so very uncomfortable.

Javert’s look spoke volumes.

Before Valjean could even find his voice, Mrs. Levesque continued with a veritable flow of words, "We didn’t think you’d come, my dear — may I call you Ultime—of course, always a first time, but to the costume party, oh dear, what a surprise, of course everyone is so excited to see you—you even dressed up! Dressed down, I should say, and who is this fine gentleman?"

While pushing them further to the open door, from which music and loud laughter emanated, she looked Javert up and down. For some reason, heat crept up Valjean’s collar.

"Mister Fauchelevent!" came another cry from the doorway. When Valjean looked, he recognized a nun, Mary, from the convent. She was now out of her habit and instead wearing what appeared to be a surprisingly realistic cowboy outfit. She was entirely covered, of course, but Valjean couldn’t help but stare at the straw on her teal faux-leather cowboy boots.

"Like it?" she asked when he saw it. "Father Dumas helped with the straw. They were missing something. I might have gone a little overboard with the realism, but…"—She shook his hand, and then grinned up at him. Out of her habit, she looked about 30 years younger. "…You also went overboard with the realism! You shouldn’t have dressed like a paramilitary black ops operative, don’t you know it’s not safe in the streets?"

From behind her, a male voice said, "They won’t come this far into the borough; it’s quite safe, I can assure you," and yet another fellow churchgoer came up, this one dressed in the uniform of the French Foreign Legion, circa 1800. Henry Lavisse, if Valjean remember correctly. "You sure picked the outfit to surprise— do the French even have that uniform?"

"Typical of you, Henry, trying to look smart and failing—surely Ultime’s uniform is a French original, much like yours is."

"I don’t think the French have paramilitary!" Mr Lavisse complained loudly.

"It is?" Valjean asked, utterly swept up in the events. One look at the sour face of Javert, and he tried to extricate himself from the conversation. "No, really, I had no interest in imposing on you today, Mrs Levesque—"

"Oh, you, stop with your polite prevaricating! Why else would you be here, dressed up in the suburbs, with your—" she swallowed the last word, and made it seem accidental. "Partner," whispered the nun, trying to be helpful, and Valjean felt himself flush. 

It was only an assumption. Valjean prayed Javert hadn’t heard, but if he had, he didn’t acknowledge the wrong conclusion. 

"You missed the best part, as usual," Henry Lavisse said. "We already murdered our victim."

Valjean grabbed Javert’s arm before he could jerk up. The detective held himself ramrod straight, probably wondering why in God’s name Valjean had dragged him into a den of murderers.

"Life-Action Roleplaying," he said in an undertone. Javert looked murderous, then confused. "It’s a crime-dinner," he explained further.

"You didn’t tell him where you were going?" Mrs Levesque asked in a high-pitched voice. "You didn’t introduce him, even."

"I am Detective Javert," he said."And if you murdered anyone, I’m the person that’s going to arrest you for murder."

Henry Lavisse made big eyes.

"Already in character," the nun giggled. And Valjean could only look into the high heavens. 

He dragged Javert off to the side. "The people here are congregation from the Church of St. Jacques," he said. "They are very religious church goers. Upstanding Catholic citizens. Every couple of months they meet for crime dinners and dress up, and play at having murdered one of their own. They‘re now trying to find the murderer before anyone else gets killed." Javert looked truly baffled by this explanation as if he had never heard of such a thing. "I’m assuming Mrs Levesque is this evening’s victim. Nobody actually died, or was murdered; it’s just the evening’s entertainment."

"Ah," Javert said, thoroughly confused. He let himself be dragged towards the hostess, who also had gathered herself and now pressed punch glasses into their hands. From four sides, people tried to talk with Valjean, sometimes even addressing Javert, who had reverted to his ramrod straight military posture. There was no easy way to escape the warm southern hospitality.

Valjean tried to protest, "My daughter is home alone," but it was more than desperate. "I should really check in on her."

Mrs Levesque winked away his protest, "You can always use my phone, if it’s that important!"

Valjean took a fortifying sip from the punch, and had to cough as the burn of the alcohol went down his throat. His half-hearted protest foundered.

Meanwhile, the nun had convinced Javert to try one of the cubes of cheese on the cheese tray. Valjean had to listen to Mr Lavisse expound upon the virtues of the French Foreign Legion, while watching Javert handling a food pick daintily with his gloves, and putting it in his mouth. Valjean didn’t know where this was going, but it wasn’t anywhere good.

Half an hour later, Henry Lavisse had died as well, clearing him of the crime, which actually seemed to deflect Javert’s suspicious glower. In fact, Javert seemed to have forgotten his purpose in following Valjean, and was acting like a normal human for once.

It didn’t prevent him from ambushing Valjean when he had to use the bathroom, though, now marginally less sober than before. "Why are they all so friendly," hissed Javert between his teeth. There was not a lot of space in Mrs Levesque’s bathroom. Valjean watched him in his black leather coat, and felt warm on his behalf. "They are very suspicious. Are you sure that’s a nun?"

"Aren’t you hot?" Valjean asked. "You seem hot."

"You are speaking nonsense," Javert said.

Valjean slipped his hands under the lapels of Javert’s coat. Javert was indeed very warm. "I’m sorry," he said, and stumbled against him. "I think the punch had actual moonshine."

A cold hand pressed against his forehead — it felt good, and Valjean sighed into it, only to notice the truncheon resting against his hip. Valjean didn’t know if it was loaded, didn’t know if any moment now he’d get a face-full of electricity, but he was also not quite so drunk as to let go of Javert.

"We are going now," Javert said, and it was the most true to himself he had been all evening. 

"Thank God," Valjean said, and sagged against his collar. Maybe being under the eye of people had staved off Javert’s obvious…derailment.

"Walk," came the command, and Valjean managed to straighten up.

"I have to leave a check," he mumbled and patted down the uniform he was still wearing. Where had he put his wallet? He must have slurred more than he was aware of, since Javert looked confused and asked, "I beg your pardon?"

"The check, for the fundraiser," he repeated. "What, you thought this was just for fun? No, this crime dinner is to raise money for the orphanage’s library. They’re trying to build a new one but just lost state funding, again."

He found the chequebook he was keeping just for that purpose, and filled it out. He doubled his usual amount, on account of having Javert with him. Javert looked uncomfortable, but there was nothing Valjean could do about that but to hurry up.His name was already blacked out, though he suspected Mrs Levesque kept a sharp enough eye on the discrete red bag hanging next to the door that she’d know it was his check anyway — nothing he could say or do would stop her nosing around. He waved goodbye to Mary, the nun, and on the way out dropped his cheque into the bag.

After the stuffy air of the house, getting out into the streets was a relief. Valjean took a deep breath, and felt much more stable. Outside, Mr Lavisse was smoking, and when they passed him by, he held his hand up in greeting.

"Any other detours planned?" Javert asked. It came out frustrated; and Valjean would have felt bad, maybe, if this night was not going to end up with him in jail again.

"No, have you?" he said placidly.

Javert was silent, in a very brooding way. It felt dangerous— not for him, but for Javert. He really did not seem like his usual self.

They walked the streets. It was very reminiscent of the walks they had taken in Montreuil. Nobody had been using the new sidewalks at night there, and nobody was using the new sidewalk here. They passed a 24-hour gas station."Should we call another Uber?" Valjean asked. "It’s going to take some time to cross the entire city on foot." He thought longingly of his bed.

"You donated a lot of money," Javert said. He sounded angry about it, too. Valjean wasn’t sure if that was because he with his criminal past wasn’t living in degenerate squalor, or if there was something else Valjean had done wrong that he was now too tired to parse.

"I still have enough for an Uber, don’t worry." Since there wasn’t any other suggestion from Javert, he went and placed the call. There would be someone here in 15 minutes.

"That’s not—" Javert stopped, suddenly. Shook his head. "You are doing this on purpose, aren’t you — this is a trick, to… to con me, I don’t know— you want me to let you go, that’s why you‘re doing this!"

Baffled, Valjean stared at him.

"This is some kind of, of reverse psychology!" Javert said accusingly, and stalked towards Valjean. "Well, I won’t have it," he snapped. "I‘ve seen through you!"

He drew his truncheon; at least it wasn’t the gun. Valjean stepped back. Now, he was standing flat against the wall of the gas station hut, an angry detective advancing on him. It was not the time to admire Javert‘s height, he thought, and it was entirely inappropriate to think about how well the leather coat fit Javert’s body— and yet, somehow, he was still afraid for his life. 

His sense of danger must be more messed up than he ever suspected.

Javert lunged at him with his truncheon, pressing it against his throat, and against the wall. He was warm, in the dark night, Valjean thought, and then froze in guilt. 

"Who could have planned Mrs Levesque?" he asked Javert.

Javert’s eyes were angry, staring him down in frustration. He didn’t look as if he was going to strike Valjean, though, nor was he using his handcuffs. They could resolve this peacefully, probably.

From behind Javert came a voice. "Um, excuse me, sir?" the gas station attendant said. Valjean had been too distracted by Javert to have noticed him earlier — he looked young, almost younger than Cosette. It had the effect of a cold shower on Valjean’s inappropriate thoughts. "Could you perhaps— er, murder your friend later? My shift ends in 10 minutes, and I really need to get home."

"I’m a cop!" Javert shouted at him. Then he must have realized that his dark leather coat and the way he was pressing a man against the wall wasn’t really underscoring his point in the right way. He let go of Valjean —and Valjean wasn’t sure he should have felt as bad about that as he did— and showed his badge to the boy all in one fluid gesture.

"Excuse-me-sir!" the attendant squeaked and ran to hide inside again.

Javert pocketed first his badge, then his truncheon, and looked marginally better when he faced Valjean again. "This is entirely your fault," he said bitingly.

Valjean’s phone dinged. Their Uber had arrived, and spared Valjean the indignity of a reply.

"Oh, man," the driver said. It was a different one, thankfully. "I was kinda hoping you guys were going to be the crazy murderers dragging around a body."

Awkwardly, Valjean stared at him.

"Yeah, this is a dangerous neighbourhood," the driver continued and peeled out of the parking lot. "You wouldn’t know from looking at it, but my buddy just drove around some peeps with a dead body in tow. Crazy, huh? And this being the Congressman’s neighborhood, too…" he trailed off, shaking his head. "Well, I thought coming out anyway was a good idea because of my student debts. Either I get paid or I get dead — win/win, ya see? You seem normal, though. Dude, is that an original uniform for the para-mils?"

For the rest of the ride, Valjean didn’t know what to say, and Javert was equally quiet.

Soon, they arrived at the house in the Avenue of the Armed Man No. 7. No lights were on. 

Valjean wavered. He did not want to leave this house, he did not want to leave Cosette. To go to prison of all places. Javert looked like a stony statue next to him. 

"You know, the motor is running," their driver said.

"—I’m technically paying for this ride," Valjean said, to the driver, and also to Javert. "You should come and join me for a cup of tea."

"Why? So you can introduce your lovely daughter to your jailor?" Javert said, bitingly.

"Woah, that was more than I wanted to know about your sex life," the driver said. "I mean, to each his own, and the coat is totally cool, man, but too much information."

Both Javert and Valjean send him furious looks — to which he held up his hands, "Jus’ telling it as it is, dudes!"

"I’ll accompany you to your door, then." Javert said, and did so. When they arrived at the door, the motor of the Uber yowled loudly and, with squealing tires, the Uber sped off.

"Why don’t you come in for a hot drink," Valjean said.

**Author's Note:**

> (1) And then they had sex, probably.  
> (2) The Church of St. Jaques de Haut Pas was called the Church of Jackass in the dulcet tones of its congregation. There’s no such church in Texas. There are churches that hold costume dinner parties, though, but usually they aren’t for charity.  
> (3) Congressman Guillenormand was very loyal to the Texan Senator, and probably voted for Trump, tbh.  
> (4) At one point this had a brick-compliant ending. Can you believe it?


End file.
